And robots shall tread upon the moon – or at least on a simulated lunar surface at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
A team of 22 University of Virginia students is competing against students from around the country in the NASA Lunabotics Challenge, building robots intended to mine the moon’s surface.
The student-run Mechatronics and Robotics Society, or MARS, designed and built robots to operate under lunar conditions and to excavate regolith – or lunar soil – to support future construction and resource extraction on the moon.
“This year, the competition is to mine lunar regolith and then to build a berm with it,” said Craig Kalkwarf, a fourth-year aerospace engineering and astronomy major who is the senior mechanical lead of the student group. “The idea is that for future missions to the moon, it would be useful to have that capability to protect the area around launch pads, shield cryogenic propellants and other similar items.”
Left photo, Richard Corp, left, Eva Klinker, center, and Amith Polineni, members of the Mechatronics and Robotics Society, work on their robot in anticipation of the NASA Lunabotics Challenge in Florida. Right photo, William Bettis connects wires in the robot’s electrical system. (Photo by Matt Riley, University Communications)
In the NASA competition, the robots must mine lunar soil, haul it across an obstacle course and then build the berm. The berms are not merely an exercise, but practical barriers to limit how much dust landing rockets could kick up, among other uses.
“If we store cryogenic propulsion propellants on the moon, we can cover them in regolith, which insulates them, keeping them cold, requiring less energy,” Kalkwarf said. “Radiation bombards the surface of the moon, and people living there for an extended period of time need radiation protection. We can take lunar regolith and cover human habitats to protect them from radiation.”
The lunar soil has peculiar properties.
“It’s kind of like a baby powder consistency, where it’s very small particles, it’s very light and fluffy, but then it also gets dense fast,” Kalkwarf said. “Its really unique materials behave really strangely.”
This year, the challenge, focused on mining for the Artemis missions, held qualifying rounds May 12 through Sunday at the University of Central Florida, with three days of finals at the Kennedy Space Center scheduled to begin Wednesday. Because the tryouts occurred over UVA Finals weekend, five members of the 22-member team flew back Saturday night to participate in the Engineering School graduation on Sunday, then returned to Florida Sunday night.
“We worked out with the organizers that we wouldn’t be running on that day, so we just had people fly out, miss that one day, fly back in, and then be ready for a Kennedy Space Center challenge in two days after that,” Kalkwarf said.
The MARS team pins its hopes on a single robot that mines and transports regolith, or moon soil. (Photo by Matt Riley, University Communications)
The MARS team built two systems. One, a two-robot combo with one machine mining and the other acting as a dump truck, was a “risky, innovative” design. But the team ended up entering its 80-pound single robot, an improved version of last year’s robot design that tested better in trials.
“It does it all,” Kalkwarf said. “It drives around, it excavates the lunar regolith, and then it dumps the regolith.”
The MARS team received $86,000 from the Jefferson Trust to build a test facility to hold manufactured regolith made of crushed basalt and rocks. Because that facility has yet to be built, the team has trained in the University’s beach volleyball court.
“This year, if our robot performs the same in regolith at the competition as it did in the sand, we will score more than the highest-scoring team last year by a factor of two,” Kalkwarf said. “Our robot is insanely good this year. It’s able to mine a lot of material quickly, traverse quickly and do this all with extreme efficiency.”
Craig Kalkwarf walks the Lawn Sunday as a dual aerospace engineering and astronomy major, having flown back to the Grounds in the middle of the NASA Lunabotics Challenge in Florida. (Photo by Matt Riley, University Communications)
As insanely good as this machine is, next year the team starts over.
“The robots we built this year are going to inspire the designs next year,” Kalkwarf said. “Every year we start from the drawing board, and NASA changes around the guidebook, generally, every year or every other year. We analyze the mission every time, and we think of ideas from the drawing board.”
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